FOL LECTURE SERIES THE ROSEWOOD MAASSACRE

The Cedar Key Public Library and the Cedar Key Friends of the Library present Dr. Edward Gonzalez-Tennant in a presentation Saturday, February 10 at 10:30 a.m. at the library. Dr. Gonzalez-Tennant will talk about the incident known as "The Rosewood Massacre" and introduce his newly-published book by the same title.

Dr. Gonzalez-Tennant will discuss his ongoing research into the 1923 race riot that, in a week-long series of events, devastated the predominantly African American community of Rosewood, Florida. This includes the use of new digital methods to investigate the town’s history, a requirement since very little documentation of the event survives. The only signs that there was once a vibrant town are a scattering of structural remains and a historical marker erected in 2004 declaring the site a Florida Heritage Landmark. The new digital methods include a mix of geospatial analysis, updated reviews of census data and property records, archaeological excavation, and virtual reality.

González-Tennant interprets these and other data through an intersectional framework, acknowledging the complex ways race, class, and gender produce discrimination across time and space. Rosewood did not occur in a vacuum, and connecting it to larger social processes is one of Gonzalez-Tennant’s central goals. The talk will review recent findings, compare them with previous ones, and discuss future work in Rosewood and the neighboring community of Sumner.

Dr. Gonzalez-Tennant is with the Department of Anthropology at the University of Central Florida.